The Tin Roof Blowdown

by James Lee Burke

  Helen glanced through the glass in my door, then opened the door without knocking. “You look sharp, Pops,” she said.

  “I hear that a lot,” I replied.

  She walked to my window and gazed at the Sunset Limited passing down the railroad tracks. She wore a pair of tight slacks and a white shirt with the short sleeves folded in neat cuffs. A four-by-seven yellow notepad was stuffed in her back pocket. She hooked her thumbs in the sides of her gunbelt. “You rested up?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. “Say it, Helen.”

  “I just got off the phone with FEMA and the FBI. The civil service and governmental structure of New Orleans has been destroyed. We’re about to get hit with a shitload of casework we don’t need.”

  “Shouldn’t you be telling this to the entire department?”

  “This particular case involves one of Clete Purcel’s bail skips. It also involves a guy you know by the name of Otis Baylor.”

  “An insurance man?”

  “That’s the guy. The Feds believe a number of homicides may have been committed by vigilantes who decided they’d have some fun during the storm. They think Otis Baylor may have popped some looters who had just gutted Sidney Kovick’s house.”

  “Home invaders hit Sidney Kovick?”

  “Yeah, evidently four of the dumbest shits in New Orleans. One got his head blown off and one will be a quadriplegic the rest of his life. The Feds believe Baylor had a grudge against blacks for raping his daughter and he probably used the opportunity to take a couple of pukes off the board.”

  “It doesn’t sound like him.”

  “The Feds are taking heat about going after gangbangers and letting white shooters skate. The Baylor investigation will probably be a lawn ornament for them. Anyway, we’re supposed to do what we can. You okay with that, bwana?”

  “What’s Clete Purcel’s role in all this?”

  She pulled the yellow notepad from her back pocket and looked at it. “The brother of the quadriplegic is named Bertrand Melancon. Clete had him in custody but lost him in the handover at the chain-link jail. Here’s the irony in all this, Dave. Clete told the Feds he thinks the Melancon brothers and a friend of theirs named Andre Rochon might actually be rapists.”

  “Based on what?”

  “Clete says Rochon’s panel truck contained evidence that might link Rochon and possibly the Melancons to an abduction and rape in the Lower Nine.”

  “Yeah, he told me about these guys. They’re the ones who ran over him right before the storm. You want me to see Baylor?”

  “You mind?”

  I once knew a door gunner in Vietnam who wouldn’t go on R amp; R out-of-country for fear he would desert and not return to duty. So he stayed stoned in the door of his Huey, stoned in the bush, and stoned in Saigon, and finished his tour without ever leaving the fresh-air mental asylum of Indochina. As Helen waited for my answer, my friend’s point of view seemed much more reasonable than I had previously thought.

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING I checked out a cruiser and drove back to New Orleans. The sky over the wetlands was still filled with birds that seemed to have no destination or home. After four days, members of the 82nd Airborne had arrived in the city and most of the looting and violence had stopped. But eighty percent of the city was still underwater, and tens of thousands of people still had nowhere to go.

  I turned off St. Charles and threaded my way through piles of downed trees on several side streets in the general direction of Otis Baylor’s house. Finally I parked my pickup and either waded or walked across people’s lawns the rest of the way.

  The front porch of Otis Baylor’s house was rounded, with a half-circle roof on it supported by Doric columns. I raised the brass ring on the door and knocked. The water had receded on his street, exposing the neutral ground. Down the street, on the opposite side, I could see the home of Sidney Kovick. A repair crew was pulling plywood off the picture windows.

  Otis Baylor opened the front door. His face was round and empty, like that of a man who had just returned from a funeral. “Yes?” he said.

  “I’m Dave Robicheaux, from the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department, Mr. Baylor,” I said. “I’ve been assigned to help in the investigation of a double shooting that took place in front of your house. You might remember me from New Iberia.”

  He did not extend his hand. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’ve got a little problem here. A high school kid got his brains blown out in front of your house, and a full-time loser with him took a round through his spinal cord. The Feds think vigilantes may have done it. Frankly, I don’t think this investigation is going anywhere, but our department is on lend-lease with the City of New Orleans and we need to do what we can.”

  There was a beat, a microsecond pause in which his eyes went away from mine.

  “Come in,” he said, holding open the door. “You’re lucky you caught me at home. I’m using the house as my office now, but I’m usually in the field with my adjusters. Would you like some tea? I still have ice in my freezer.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll make this as quick as I can, sir.”

  He invited me to sit down with him in his den. The books on his shelves were largely referential or encyclopedic in nature, or had been purchased from book clubs that specialize in popular history and biography. His desk was overflowing with paper. Through the side window I could see a bullet-headed man on a ladder trying to free a splintered oak limb from his roof.

  “An FBI investigator said you heard a single shot but you don’t know where it came from,” I said.

  “I was asleep. The shot woke me up. I looked out the dormer window and saw a kid floating in the water and another guy lying half inside the front of the boat.”

  “You own a firearm, Mr. Baylor?”

  “It’s Otis. Yes, a 1903-model Springfield bolt-action rifle. You want to see it?”

  “Not right now. Thanks for offering. After you saw the kid in the water and the one half inside the boat, did you go outside?”

  “By the time I got my clothes on, one guy had loaded the wounded one all the way into the boat and was already down to the corner. Another guy was running.”

  “They were all black?”

  “As far as I could tell. It was dark.”

  “And you saw nobody else on the street or on a porch or in a house window?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  I opened the manila folder in my hand and read from the notes given to me over the phone by an FBI agent working out of Baton Rouge. “The Feds and the guys from NOPD believe the shot had to come from this side of the street.”

  “Maybe it did. I wouldn’t know.”

  “The only occupied houses in immediate proximity to the shooting were yours and your next-door neighbor’s.”

  “I have no argument with other people’s conclusions as to what happened here. I’ve told you what I heard and what I saw.” He looked at his watch. “You want to see the Springfield?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  He went upstairs and returned with the rifle, handing it to me with the bolt open on an empty magazine. “Am I a suspect in the shooting?”

  “Right now, we’re eliminating suspects.”

  “Why didn’t your friends take my firearm? That’s what I would have done.”

  “Because they didn’t have a place to store evidence. Because they didn’t have a warrant. Because the system is broken.”

  But there was another reality at work as well, one I hadn’t shared with him. The round that had struck Eddy Melancon’s throat and emptied Kevin Rochon’s brainpan never slowed down and the metal tracings inside the wounds it inflicted would be of little evidentiary value.

  I lifted the rifle to my face and sniffed at the chamber. “You just oiled it?”

  “I don’t remember exactly when I cleaned it.”

  “Can I see the ammunition that goes with it?”

  “I don’t even know if I have any.”


  “What kind of ammunition do you fire in it?”

  “It’s a thirty-aught-six-caliber rifle. It fires thirty-aught-six-caliber rounds.”

  I was sitting in a burgundy-colored soft leather chair, an autumnal green-gold light filtering through the trees outside. But the comfortable ambience did not coincide with the sense of disquiet that was beginning to grow inside me. “That’s not my point, sir. This is a military weapon. Do you fire metal-jacketed, needle-nosed rounds in it?”

  “I target shoot. I don’t hunt. I shoot whatever ammunition is on sale. What is this?”

  “It’s illegal to hunt with military-type ammunition, because it passes right through the animal and wounds instead of kills. I think the two shooting victims got nailed with a metal-jacketed rather than a soft-nosed round. One other thing. You keep referring to the DOA as a ‘kid.’ You call the other looters ‘guys.’”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “You’re correct, the DOA was a teenager. The wounded man and his brother are both adults. The man who fled was probably a guy by the name of Andre Rochon, also an adult. You speak of these guys with a sense of familiarity, as though you saw them up close.”

  He rolled his eyes. He started to speak, then gave it up. He was sitting in a chair at his desk, his long-sleeved white shirt crinkling. His stolid face and square hands and scrubbed manner made me think of a farmer forced to go to church by his wife. I continued to stare at him in the silence. “Listen, Mr. Robicheaux-”

  “It’s Dave.”

  “I’ve told you what I know. Right now there are thousands of people in Louisiana and Mississippi waiting to hear from their insurance carrier. That’s me. I wish you well, but this conversation is over.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not over.” I closed the manila folder and set it by my foot, as though its contents were no longer relevant. “Years ago I attended a convention of Louisiana and Mississippi police officers at the Evangeline Hotel in Lafayette. That particular weekend the FBI had dragged the Pearl River in search of a lynching victim. They didn’t find the guy they were looking for, but they found three others, one whose body had been sawed in half. I was in the hotel bar when I heard four plainclothesmen laughing in a booth behind me. One of them said, ‘Did you hear about the nigger who stole so many chains he couldn’t swim across the Pearl?’ Another detective said, ‘You know how they found him? They waved a welfare check over the water and this burr-headed boy popped to the surface and yelled out, ‘Here I is, boss.’

  “These guys not only made me ashamed I was a police officer, they made me ashamed I was a white man. I think you’re the same kind of guy I am, Mr. Baylor. I don’t think you’re a racist or a vigilante. I know what happened to your daughter. If my daughter were attacked by degenerates and sadists, I’d be tempted to hand out rough justice, too. In fact, any father who didn’t have those feelings is not a father.”

  His eyes were blue and lidless, his big hands splayed on his knees, the backs as rough as starfish.

  “Get out in front of this, partner,” I said. “The justice system is emblematic and selective. Don’t let some bureaucratic functionaries hang you out to dry.”

  His eyes stayed locked on mine, his thoughts concealed. Then whatever speculation or conclusion they had contained went out of them and he looked toward the doorway.

  “Hi, Melanie. This is Mr. Robicheaux, from New Iberia. He was in the neighborhood and just dropped by to see how we’re doing. I told him we’re doing just fine,” Otis Baylor said.

  “Yes, I remember you. It’s very nice to see you again,” his wife said, extending one hand, an iced drink in the other. “We’re doing quite well, considering.” She looked at the Springfield rifle that was propped by my chair. “This isn’t about the Negroes who were shot, is it? We’ve already told the authorities everything we know. I can’t believe something like that occurred in front of our house.”

  I WALKED NEXT DOOR and looked up the ladder at the bullet-headed man wrestling with a broken oak limb on his roof. Out in the alley, a forklift was unloading a massive generator from the bed of a truck.

  “Could I speak with you, sir?” I called, lifting up my badge holder.

  The bullet-headed man climbed down from the ladder, his face ruddy from his work. I told him who I was and why I was in the neighborhood. “Tom Claggart,” he said, his meaty hand gripping mine warmly.

  “Has the FBI or the city police talked with you?”

  “Hang on a minute.”

  He walked out to the alley and told the forklift operator where to set the generator in his yard. Then he returned, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the generator ended up in the right place, on an old brick patio half sunk in mud.

  “Got a friend who’s a shipbuilder. He gave me one of his generators,” he said. “I should have put one in before the storm, like Otis did. What was that you were saying?”

  “Has the FBI or the city police been out?”

  “No, I wish they had.”

  “You heard the shot?”

  “I didn’t hear anything. I was sound asleep. I’d been chasing those bastards all over the neighborhood.”

  “I see. Why do you wish the FBI or NOPD had talked with you?”

  “To tell them to clean up the goddamn city, that’s why.”

  I nodded, my expression pleasant, my eyes focused on his flower bed. “You own firearms, sir?”

  “You bet your ass I do.”

  “Think any of your neighbors might have gotten sick and tired of being robbed and intimidated the other night?”

  “Can you spell that out a little more clearly?”

  “People get fed up. Or sometimes fed up and scared. A housewife picks up a thumb-buster and blows an intruder through a glass window. The guy turns out to be a serial rapist. At most police stations, there’s usually a round of applause at morning roll call.”

  He looked at me blankly, his mouth a tight seam.

  “The Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms to protect our homes and our loved ones,” I said. “During a time of social anarchy, the good guys sometimes feel a need to use extreme measures. I think their point of view is understandable. You hearing me on this, Mr. Claggart?”

  “Otis has had a big cross to carry,” he replied.

  “I’m aware of that.” I kept my eyes fastened on his.

  He huffed air out of his nose and looked at Otis Baylor’s house. For just a moment I thought I saw a cloud slip across his face, the stain of resentment or envy take hold in his expression. “He said something about hanging black ivory on the wall.”

  “Mr. Baylor said this?”

  “Earlier in the evening, when some guys were breaking into houses on the other side of the street.”

  “Did others hear him say this?”

  “A couple of friends were in the yard with me. Otis had been outside with his rifle. Listen, I don’t blame him. We offered to help him, in fact.”

  “Would you write down the names of your friends and their addresses, please?”

  “I hope I’m not getting anybody in trouble. I just want to do the right thing,” he said, taking my pen and notepad from my hand.

  With neighbors like Tom Claggart, Otis Baylor didn’t need enemies.

  BUT THERE WAS an ancillary player not far away I could not resist interviewing. Sidney Kovick was an enigmatic man whose personality was that of either a sociopath or a master thespian. He was tall, well built, with dark hair, close-set eyes, and a knurled forehead, and he wore fine clothes and shined oxblood loafers with tassels on them. When he walked he seemed to jingle with the invisible sound of money and power. When he entered a room, most people, even those who did not know who he was, automatically dialed down their voices.

  He had grown up on North Villere Street and worked as a UPS driver before he joined the Airborne and went to Vietnam. He came home with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart but seemed to have no interest in his own heroism. Sidney had liked the army because he understood
it and appreciated its consistency and predictability. He also appreciated the number of rackets it afforded him. He lent money at twenty percent interest to fellow enlisted men, had ties with pimps in Saigon ’s Bring-Cash Alley, and sold truckloads of PX goods on the Vietnamese black market. Sidney didn’t believe in setting geographical limits on his talents.

  Whenever someone asked Sidney ’s advice about a problem of any kind, his admonition was always the same: “Don’t never let people know what you’re thinking.”

  He owned a flower shop, loved movies, and always wore a carnation in his lapel. His favorite quote was a paraphrase of a line spoken by Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind: “Great fortunes are made during the rise and fall of nations.” Sidney was invited to the governor’s inauguration ball, rode on the floats during Mardi Gras, and performed once on the wing of a biplane at an aerial show over Lake Pontchartrain. Longtime cops looked upon him as a refreshing change from the street detritus they normally dealt with. The only problem with romanticizing Sidney Kovick was the fact he could snuff your wick and sip a glass of burgundy while he did it.

  Workmen were going in and out of his front door. I stepped inside without knocking. The interior looked like an army of Norsemen had marched through it. Sidney stood in his dining room, looking up at a chandelier that someone had shredded into tangled strips with an iron garden rake.

  “They hit you pretty hard, huh?” I said.

  He stared at me as though he were sorting through faces on a rolodex wheel. “Yeah, the puke population is definitely out of control. I think we need a massive airdrop of birth-control devices on two thirds of the city. What are you doing here, Dave?”

  “Investigating the shooting of the guys who creeped your house.”

  “House creeps don’t piss in your oven and refrigerator.”

  “You’re right,” I said, plaster crunching under my shoes. “Looks like they tore out all your walls and part of your ceilings. Think they were after anything in particular?”